Latest / Short Term Rental Problems and Solutions / Where to Search for Your STR in 2026

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Where to Search for Your STR in 2026 · Short Term Rental Problems and Solutions

• Jeremiah: It's not all sunshine and five star reviews. If you've realized that being an STR investor isn't glamorous, you're in the right place. Today we're answering one of the most common questions I get as a real estate broker and as a property manager. Where should I buy? We get into the nuances of the area, I call the Western Poconos, as well as the biggest red flags to watch out for. We get into it because this is the community where we talk about the gross, the awkward, and the operational messes, as well as the real strategies to help you keep going instead of quitting. Anyone can win big in this industry. But you can also ignore education and you can quit. My name is Jeremiah. I'm an investor with over a decade of experience, and I'm also a property manager with over 140 units under management. I talk about what rental investing looks like from the inside. Let's get right into today's email. Hi, Jair. I was looking in the Finger Lakes region for an STR, then came across the Poconos on social media. I reached out to a few agents on Realtor.com, and the one who called me back. Booked some showings and it seems like they had no clue about the area. They didn't allow enough time for travel from Jim Thorpe to Lake Ariel to East Stroudsburg and we only got to see three properties in a whole afternoon. I had asked them to compare the towns with respect to short-term rentals, and they just talked about how far each one was to Philadelphia and New York City. I feel like we need to figure out which town is the best and then schedule showings from there. So which town is the best town for me to focus on for short term rentals? Thanks, Don. Well Don I can't really steer you, unfortunately. so we're not going to call this steering. I'm going to give you my opinion on which areas are short-term rental friendly and which ones are not but I'm not telling you like buy in this community or don't buy in this community. Okay. as a real estate agent, historically, realtors have actually gotten in trouble for pushing people towards a certain location based on their demographics. And that's certainly not what we're gonna be doing here. So full disclosure. right out there in the middle. now I don't think that the best property for short term rentals is based on just its location. I think it's based on the property. So I tend to not focus on the location or the town. And that's pretty much what you just asked about. So I think that what makes a property most successful is a combination of its marketability, the niche that it fills, its value and its risk level. I tell everybody that I work with they should search within certain townships. I call this the Western Poconos. But outside of those townships, you can still find some really good deals. But it's not about location necessarily. It's about the property itself. No, there's not a best town. Well, if there was a best town, it would probably be Lake Harmony. some people would say it's Albrightsville, other people would say it's Pocono Lake. Still, some other people would say it's Tobyhanna The thing is, in these five townships, that is Kidder Township, Penn Forest Township, Tunkhannock Township, Tobyhanna Township, and Coolbaugh Township. Those are the regions where short-term rentals are allowed in R1 regular residential zoning. you can search for like a regular house and you can buy a normal property in any of those areas and you can do just fine with short-term rentals. so there's strength in numbers. I don't recommend going to the outskirts or the furthest distances or like the most rural communities. I don't think it's smart to be the only property. In your entire township, that's a short-term rental. You might have the market cornered. And anybody who wants to STR in that area is only coming to your property, but you're at a, I think, a high risk of regulation or a high risk of you know just being completely banned if you're in that area where you're out there by yourself. now it is a calculated risk, but remember that in Pennsylvania, short term rentals are regulated by the township because this is a zoning. Thing. Transient use is a zoning classification. So that was determined by the Superior Court in Pennsylvania, where they said, that transient use, that's Airbnb, like short-term rentals, less than 30 days, is considered a transient use. And for that to be allowed in residential zoning is a zoning issue, which meant that it was back to the townships to determine what is allowed and what is not allowed in their zoning. So at that point, which was I think in like 2018, 2019, every township started developing some sort of an ordinance to deal with this short-term rental zoning issue. And over time, over like the next three or four years, there were townships that didn't want it. And now they could say it's not allowed. There were townships that did want it, and they could say, we're gonna adopt this ordinance where we're gonna allow it under these circumstances. what this did not do. Is it did not ban short-term rentals in the areas where it's of value to the community, right? So it just kind of, I don't know, brought most of those short-term rentals and most of those investors in the same area. another thing that happened though, because of this was that HOAs and the Poconos is the land of homeowners' associations. It's a necessary evil. those HOAs then determined that they were gonna take that local conversation from the township level. And they were going apply it to their homeowners association, and that they were going to ban or regulate or cash in on short-term rentals themselves. So that had nothing to do with necessarily the state's decision, but it was something that they were always empowered to do. But people were talking about it the most at this period of time. So it's when it really kind of came up. Anyway, you're asking about the best town. And in my opinion, that would be Lake Harmony. The problem is Lake Harmony is expensive. And Like the prices are sometimes pretty equal to the return. So your return on investment ends up being the same here compared to other townships. Because in other townships and other towns, you can get something that's less expensive, but that will cash flow just as well. So your ratio ends up being about the same. What Lake Harmony has that other places don't have is some like massive houses. And that's because of a lot of different factors. One of those factors is like it doesn't have a cap on The number of people that you can rent to. I mean, technically it does, but nobody ever pays attention to it. And nobody's ever been, and to my knowledge, nobody has ever been fined on it. There's a property over here that rents to 22 people, and that's per side. It's a duplex, and there's 22 people on this side, 22 people on this side. And so there's one master listing for this duplex that's 44 people. You can't find that in Coolbaugh Township. Coolbaugh Township has a calculation for occupancy that is two per bedroom plus two. And the maximum is 14, which tells you if you get a six bedroom or bigger, you're still limited to 14 people. So they have that cap. I think they should take it away because there are actually developers who will make these massive like compounds and they should be able to rent to more than 14 people. But You know, I'm not a resident of Coolbaugh and that's my take, I still think Coolbaugh it's a great location for rentals. And you know, we're gonna get into each of these little townships and their little nuances in a moment, but high overview, like Lake Harmony is nice and it's great because short term rentals is like their only industry. in Lake Harmony, we have two ski areas. and one motorboat lake. And you can't have gasoline engines on the lakes in the Poconos, except a couple of exceptions. One is Beltzville Lake. One is the Delaware River, which is not a lake and it's too shallow in certain areas. the next is Lake Wallenpaupack and Lake Harmony is one of those few. I've also heard Lake Ariel is a potential as well. However, if you think about where all of those are located, Beltzville Lake doesn't have any lakefront property. So that is a public state park. And you can drive your boat over to it and put it in the water, and you can go around for a while, but it's not like touristy, where you would have like restaurants and bars and stuff like that near it. So here in Lake Harmony, you've got two ski areas close by and you've got a motorboat lake. So it's like the best of both worlds. Whereas Wallenpaupack there's not skiing nearby, but there's plenty of motorboating, and it's actually a much bigger lake. Beltzville, there's no lakefront property. And like the closest skiing is Blue Mountain, which is not even that close to Beltzville. I think it's at least 10 minutes away. So Lake Harmony is kind of unique and special because of the ski areas, because of the boating, because of the lake scene. And it's also kind of a like a name brand, right? Like I grew up down near Philadelphia. And down there, when people wanted to go to the Pocono's, they were talking about Mount Pocono or they were talking about Lake Harmony. And I remember people talking about getting away for a weekend or getting away for a week or vacationing at their summer house. And where they were talking about going was Lake Harmony. Even though one of them had a house in Lake Naomi, which is not Lake Harmony, but he still called it Lake Harmony, So like it's kind of just a brand, you know, in certain areas and certain circles where they talk about the Pocono's and Lake Harmony kind of interchangeably. The other one is Mount Pocono then they also will talk about Camelback because Camelback's like the biggest ski area over here. They have the most lifts, the most trails, and the most sales So Camelback. is also like a pretty hot market. so Don, what you really want to do with your realtor, if you even keep the one that you just said doesn't seem to know anything. what you want to really do with your realtor is just focusing on those five townships. Like to go from the end of one to the end of the other is about 45 minutes. So all of your showings can be kind of compressed into one day. And I've shown like twelve houses in one day in the same region before, So you can see a good number. It's just a matter of scheduling it all out so that they're close to each other. I would start the day probably at the end of Penn Forest and talk about Towamensing Trails and Indian Mountain Lakes, and then go up through Blakeslee and Lake Harmony and then over to Pocono Lake, ending with Long Pond and Tobyhanna maybe hitting Pocono Summit on the way. But these are all town names inside of those five townships. Okay. So the same thing that's true of townships is actually true of HOAs. There's no like perfect homeowners association. In fact, some guests are looking for lake communities. Some guests don't care about lake communities. So I wouldn't actually put too much value on the fact that you're in this HOA versus that HOA just because of their amenities. And I still feel like there's an overabundance of properties that have lake access compared to the number of guests who are specifically looking for lake access. Just don't think it makes as much of a difference. So next I want to get into some of these townships and we'll actually go through how I would search and how you can search as well. So I'm going to try something I haven't done before. And that is to share my screen. So I'm going to start by just searching based on township. So let's start with Kidder Township. So, what you immediately notice is that Kidder Township is all of Lake Harmony. And then these other two like little spots outside of it, and a little section of Albrightsville. So within Lake Harmony, when I talk about Kidder Township, I'm really just talking about this section down here where you have Lake Harmony. big part of the reason for that is because up here, in these kind of outskirts of Lake Harmony, you've got Jack Frost. And for return on investment, I haven't ever seen any signs of success from Jack Frost. I'd like to see them. I think it's remote. It's not likely to happen. the other part that's a little remote is out here next to the turnpike, you've got Pocono Lakes. You can't really do short-term rentals there, so I don't really recommend that one either. And then also part of Kidder Township is Holiday Pocono And that's an HOA where short-term rentals are not allowed. And it's a shame because it's got a lot of like really nice vacation homes, but they just kind of regulated themselves into this. And if you understand like the attitude of that community, it's kind of like nobody really cares about their values. So looking just at Kidder Township, we've got two main areas that is. So from this point where my cursor is to the left. You've got Split Rock. so Split Rock is a private community. They take care of the roads. most houses have access to a community sewer, community water system, and a few other things. As a homeowner in Split Rock, you also have the ability to purchase bunch of amenities, like you can go to into the pool at the resort, you can go on the beach, but you can't really do that if you don't purchase that membership. So It's kind of valuable, kind of not valuable. the roads are not well maintained. Split Rock. I think we're all just kind of waiting for Split Rock to go out of business. It's been sold a handful of times. They've got all these responsibilities. The roads themselves are not in really great shape, but it's still chugging along and it still presents a good opportunity for you if you can buy like the right property. Over on the other side, we've got Lake Harmony Estates, and that's like this section here with skye. Drive and Pine Knoll Estates, Lupine, Spring Street, a couple of roads over there. Lake Harmony Estates is really nice because your guests are going to have access to the beach and the lake. So it is a private lake. There's no public land around this lake for you to just like put a kayak in the water. So you have to have access to the lake somehow. And this homeowners association does. So if you buy a property in Lake Harmony Estates, Then you have that. there's also some massive, just massive houses in Lake Harmony Estates that are extremely successful. Now, around the lake, you've got properties that start at a million dollars. And I've seen properties over there bought that were in terrible shape for like $750,000, bulldozed and just wrecked so that they could build a one and a half million dollar property. On Lake Harmony. So this is very, very expensive real estate over here. When you are outside of the HOA, you've also got some good opportunities. Some of these properties have access to the lake, some of them do not. just so that you know, your renters don't always have access to these things. down here, once we get closer to Big Boulder Lake, which is again not Lake Harmony, it's in the town of Lake Harmony, but it's not the same lake. So Big Boulder Lake is a gorgeous big lake. And it's very nice and it overlooks the ski area, Big Boulder but there's no motors allowed. I mean, they might allow electric motors, but here's what to know is there's a bunch of town homes over there. There's some town homes, there's a couple condos as well. They all present a decent opportunity and an equal playing field. But it's difficult to find your niche when you look just like all the other houses in your community. And like the interiors sometimes all look exactly the same. So Success in vacation rentals comes from the property itself and looking and feeling niche. It's got to be special somehow. People have to remember it in order to come back to it once they've searched through all the different properties. So that's why I kind of steer away from townhomes, is because it's a little more difficult to make them niche. It's a little more difficult to make them stand out and unique and special. Okay. So what I can say about Laurel Woods and Midlake and Covehaven. And even Harmony Ridge is that a couple of these have access to Boulder Lake, which I think is really nice, and some of them just don't. So that pretty much tells you about Lake Harmony. when we talk about Lake Harmony, we're also looking at the center of the bullseye. So another thing I'm going to reference a couple of times is this dartboard analogy. And if you haven't caught on to that from previous episodes, that's my theory that when guests are looking for a place to stay in the wintertime, they're typing in Lake Harmony or they're typing in Camelback. So, where they end up is usually the second circle of the dart board or the third. Just like when you throw a dart, you're aiming for the center and you type that into your search radius. But then what Airbnb ends up sending you is something that's further out over and over again. maybe I could illustrate that with another concentric circle. So here's our dartboard. what you're seeing here. And so this extends out. the first circle is Lake Harmony, and it's the Lake Harmony that I was just describing, not like Jack Frost but the next circle out, the second circle would be Blakeslee and Albrightsville. So Albrightsville includes Towamensing Trails, it includes Indian Mountain Lakes, it's basically just those two. and then there's also Blakeslee and Blakeslee includes Brier Crest Woods, Greenwood Acres, and a little small section of Camelot Forest, which I think is still is a second circle. And then your third circle out would actually include Arrowhead Lakes. And Arrowhead and Jim Thorpe, that is. So Arrowhead and Jim Thorpe. Jim Thorpe has some properties, some really good ones. And Arrowhead has a ton of properties. There's a lot of inventory up there. There's also a very strong summertime demand. But then the second place where you would be looking is right down here in Tannersville. This is Camelback. And so if we go with a dartboard from Camelback. then that would look a little more spread out for the second circle. So the dartboard for Camelback would be a little bit more spread out, but there's some nuance to this. So if you're looking at my screen, you're seeing that right there in Tannersville is the middle circle. And right next to Camelback, you've got everything's in pretty much Jackson Township. There's a few that are in Pocono Township, but we're gonna get onto that in a second. And notice that neither one, Jackson nor Pocono, are in my five townships. I think Jackson still presents a good value, and you can find some properties over there that are going to do really well. But what to know is that the next circle out is actually Long Pond and Pocono Summit. And that's a little far away from Tannersville. in fact, this concentric circle, like this this dartboard analogy, your second circle goes a little further away from Camelback. But that's just because of like the route to get there and the inventory that's there. And then what you find in like Stroudsburg, Marshalls Creek, Cresco, Effort, Brodheadsville, Saylorsburg is a whole bunch of townships that don't allow any short term rentals So it really only goes in one direction, when it's scaling away, it's really just going towards Tobyhanna and Mount Pocono and Arrowhead Lake and Long Pond. It's just going in that direction where short term rentals are actually allowed. Cause there's not a lot of inventory in Tannersville. It's only the ones that are grandfathered in. Because they basically banned it. And then now they're raising their fees to like a thousand dollars or twenty five hundred dollars a year in order to continue doing short term rentals in Pocono Township. Back to the point. So that is like the basic dartboard analogy. Let me just get rid of these circles. And now we can talk about a different township. So the next one is Penn Forest Township. And Penn Forest Township is the first circle out. So I call it a second circle from Lake Harmony, but it's also part of it is a third circle. Okay, so over here in Jim Thorpe, you've got properties that are like a third circle. I think it's just a little more remote. It's a little further away from ski areas. But over here in Towamensing Trails and Indian Mountain Lake, you've got a lot of short-term rentals that are allowed. because they're in Penn Forest Township and it's in a second circle. So I like the marketplace. what to about Towamensing Trails is they do not allow fire pits. So, I mean, they don't allow your guests to use a fire pit, they'll let you do it. but sometimes it's not fantastic. Their HOA fees are pretty reasonable for the amenities that you get, short-term rentals is really, really common there. In fact, the community decided They were going to limit short-term rentals, and there was so much community backlash because there's so many short-term rentals there, they said that they were going to limit it to like maybe 10% of the community, and immediately like they were threatened with lawsuit after lawsuit and all these community members came together and said, We don't want this. So they just cut out the idea forevermore. So Towamensing Trails is a Good neighborhood, in my experience, for short-term rentals. it's really common there. They know what they're doing. Their registration fees are pretty reasonable, their process is a little archaic too. So they're one of the only ones that won't let you do it online and pay for it online. You actually have to go pick up your passes. this one over here, Indian Mount Lakes, this is the other HOA where you can do vacation rentals in Albrightsville So Indian Mountain Lakes has a lot of amenities, but they're also gated. the fact that they're gated, it just kind of restricts your abilities as a property owner. And I personally don't like the gate. Now, maybe it does add a little value, to you in the form of security because your guests can't just get back in whenever they feel like it. But it does also make things more difficult when you have to call in contractors and guests and everything else. They exercise a lot more control over the property owners than other places that don't have gates. so that's why I kind of like steer towards actually, I don't want to use the word steering. That's why I kind of divert towards Towamensing Trails instead. And you can actually see this in the prices. Like the price per square foot is much higher for Towamensing Trails than it is for Indian Mountain Lakes. And that gate is the big thing that's bringing down the values. So, other things to know about Indian Mountain Lakes, they have pools, they have lakes, they have all those amenities that Towamensing Trails has, but they have more of it. and Indian Mountain Lakes actually we're going to be talking about in Tunkhannock Township as well. there's three townships in this HOA. now, over here in this little section of Albrightsville, we've got Holiday Pocono. Holiday Pocono doesn't want to allow any more short-term rentals. So I wouldn't buy there. what I've been told is that you can continue on the short-term rental business if the previous owner has a short term rental business. I don't trust that. I just feel like it's a very high area of risk, not because of the township, but because of the HOA. something else to know about Mount Pocahontas is it's always just kind of been like this like I don't know, it's like C plus kind of community, maybe C minus, So it's always just kind of been dingy and their amenities are not standout or unique or special. they don't have a lake most of the roads are dirt roads. they also I know people who live here and they feel like the HOA has no teeth. So like they might make a threat that you can't cut down a tree, but people cut down the tree all the time. they're not doing things with permits. And I heard about some embezzlement there going on anyway. Moving on. across the road from Mount Pocahontas is a really nice community. this area is called Valley View. But they don't allow short-term rentals in Valley View. So you can nix that one as well. down here, there's a little road. It's actually two roads. That one's called Stone Ridge. They don't allow vacation rentals there either. they've got like one or two. It's a very small HOA. So what I would consider high risk. And then you've got almost nothing that's outside of HOAs. However, over here by the turnpike, you've got Hickory Run Estates. So Hickory Run is this like small little section here. Here's one house that's in it. Hickory Run, They'll allow a certain number of STRs and right now they have like maybe 10 permits available as far as the HOA is concerned. It's a thousand dollars per calendar year that you pay for the privilege of renting your property out. I do manage one property in this community, but they don't really have any amenities that your guests are going to use. And that is pretty much all of Penn Forest Township until you get down to Bear Creek. So Bear Creek. Is a nice little HOA. I like the community. I don't manage anything there right now, but I would like to. they've got a nice lake, beach, pool, it's cool. It's considered part of Jim Thorpe, though. So I don't know honestly how that area will do as well as I know other areas. So the next one I've chosen here is Tunkhannock Township. And Tunkhannock Township is pretty much the other half of Indian Mountain Lakes. That's what's down here. And Brier Crest Woods and a portion of Emerald Lakes. So I really like Emerald Lakes for Vacation Rentals. they are a really good proximity to Camelback. What Camelback has a shortage of inventory for is anything that's a big house. So that would be the single family detached, that's five bedrooms or bigger. In fact, any inventory, there's a ton of townhomes down at Camelback. So there's a ton of like three bedrooms and four bedrooms. Actually, there's very few voores. So anything in Emerald Lakes that's four bedrooms or bigger does extremely well because if somebody's looking in the center of the dartboard for something that's four bedrooms or bigger, they're not likely to find anything. Which means they're shopping primarily in that second circle. They're gonna end up in Long Pond or Pocono Summit, which presents a huge opportunity if you're in Emerald Lakes. Something else to know about Emerald Lakes is that that HOA actually has an indoor pool. Now, there's other nuances to that. And one half of the community is in Tobyhanna Township. So we could talk about that nuance as well, but let's not get too far into it, right? getting back to Tunkhannock Township. So I do actually really like Tunkhannock Township. This is where my short-term rentals are. And that's three properties that I own that are short-term rentals. One's currently in renovations, but whatever. You don't need to know too much about me. in Brier Crest Woods, this is a community I really like actually. Brier Crest Woods has similar amenities to Towamensing Trails, but they don't have a pool. their HOA fees are higher. But it's a really nice little kind of quiet community. I think short-term rentals are pretty safe there. And you still get a really good cost per square foot. And it's very, very close to Lake Harmony. So this is a really good spot for that wintertime, like second circle. It's right there. and it's in Tunkhannock Township, which is really not that restrictive. I think it's a good township for vacation rentals. now we mentioned Indian Mountain Lakes and Brier Crest Woods. Outside of HOAs, you've got Very slim pickings. You don't really have many. But in Tunkhannock Township, there's a couple over here in a subdivision. it's not really well known. there's no HOA there. There's another HOA over here called Sierra View. You cannot do vacation rentals in Sierra View. there's another one over here. And these are on High Country Drive, and High Country Estates does not want short term rentals either. And they're run by a person which I don't want to name, but she is the zoning officer for Tobyhanna Township, even though her primary residence is in Tunkhannock Township, which I think is allowed because it's basically just a job. But she regulates vacation rentals as the zoning officer and lives in an HOA that doesn't allow vacation rentals. And she's also a real estate agent. so that's just a little bit of the Tea the local Tea right? so let's focus in on this Emerald Lakes. So within Emerald Lakes, you've got a handful of properties that are part of Tunkhannock Township. And Tunkhannock Township, I think, is less restrictive. I think it's a healthier environment for vacation rental owners. And so if I was in Emerald Lakes and I was in Tunkhannock Township, I feel like that would be the win, right? It's similar in a lot of ways to being in Lake Harmony. Emerald Lakes does have a bunch of lakes, it has A couple of beaches, it's got some standout amenities, outdoor pool, indoor pool. The indoor pool is really a game changer, really. my only criticism of the indoor pool though is it's not open more hours. Like I really wish they would be open more frequently and maybe that they would have like a lifeguard on duty, because as soon as somebody drowns there, it's gonna be all over the news and the thing's gonna be shut down for a while. So it would be good for them to have a lifeguard. But anyhow, that's pretty much Tunkhannock Township, let's switch to another township. So getting into Tobyhanna Township, you see how all these dots changed. this seems like a bigger geographical area. In reality, there's just more HOAs here. so that's the other half of Emerald Lakes. And we talked about, you know, Emerald Lakes just now. Their amenities, I think, are very good. And it's a second circle. If you can get a four-bedroom or bigger in Emerald Lakes, you can do really well. then we've also got a portion of Pocono Summit, which is another like second circle. I'm not going to touch on those HOAs too much though, because Stillwater and Stillwater Estates not really high on my list for property where you can be successful. this whole section over here in Pocono Pines is pretty much Lake Naomi and Timber Trails, and they kind of discourage vacation rentals, even though they're technically still allowed. Timber Trails, I've heard it's not allowed. I just don't shop there. The values are very high. It's a well-organized community and they've done a good job of bringing everybody's values up. However, that doesn't present a value for your guests. So I don't really have any reason to, you know, tell people to shop in Pocono Pines. And that includes all of Pocono Pines, except for like outside of it, there's a couple of really small houses. If you can be outside of an HOA and in Pocono Pines, it's a good spot. Really good spot. So most of Tobyhanna Township, for what my buyers typically are looking at is in Arrowhead Lakes or Locust Lake Village. So this is an area in Pocono Lake. It's considered, in my opinion, a third circle, but it's an overlapping third circle. People will come here that want to rent in Camelback. People will come here that want to rent in Lake Harmony. And they're actually close to both ski areas. Well, all three ski areas, technically. So Locust Lake Village, I think, is pretty good for community. they're very active, they have a lot of golf carts rolling around. It's what a lot of people think of when they say like they want a lake house in the summer up in the mountains. it's a very wooded community. There's three lakes, three beaches. They do not have a pool. that's something important to know. That's one way for differentiating them compared to Arrowhead Lakes. but they do have, you know, relatively reasonable fees for all the amenities that are offered, and their registration fees are really reasonable. so I know we haven't touched on registration fees for all the other communities, just think of them all as being average. This one is below average, it's less expensive than average. So it's $35 per reservation, which is really not bad. Regardless of the number of days, regardless of the number of people, it's just 35 bucks. And then you also pay once per year. I think it's around four or five hundred bucks. So once per year, it's like a bigger number, but it then the number per reservation is low. So I like the community. Also, you can take last-minute reservations there. Once you get it over at Arrowhead, actually, let me touch on Arrowhead when we talk about Coolbaugh Township. down here, we've got this like, you know, it's like cross street. this is a very small little subdivision. They're really disorganized. and from my experience, they're really laid back. They probably allow vacation rentals, but it's like, it's kind of a minefield. It's difficult to know. And there's like one listing over there. And for some unknown reason, nobody's bought it yet. this other area right here that I'm circling, this is Wagner Forest. They don't allow short term rentals there, never have. over here, there's one, two listings in Camelot Forest. Camelot Forest is one of my favorite communities. They don't require registration, they have good amenities, no pool, but they do have two lakes. I like the community. It's really wooded. It feels really nice when you're there. well paved roads, like it's a good community. It's just like There's only two houses available, currently on the market. this one over here, Greenwood Acres, this one is broiled in controversy. And I don't know how far I want to get into it right now, but this is in second circle out from Lake Harmony. It's a good neighborhood, good location. They have good amenities in my experience. Lake Sinca, that's short for Sincavich. it's a family that developed this HOA and they still exercise an unusual amount of control over the community. Because in an HOA, every property owner gets a vote and every property represents a vote, generally speaking. Most of them do it that way. But the more properties you own, the more control you have over the community. Well, the Sincavich family developed out this community and even built a lot of the homes in there, but they still own a lot of the land, a lot of these individual lots that have not been developed yet. So the Sincavich family. Has been building houses and they've been building massive homes in this community and they've been kind of gearing it towards vacation rentals. So there's one specific family that I know of in this community that does not want that because they want a quiet, little, peaceful community that doesn't have vacation rentals going on. So there's a lot of controversy here. There's some very important people within the township that are butting heads because one has a lot of control in the HOA. The other one doesn't. They only have like maybe three votes. And that's not enough for them to sway the whole community in the other direction. so because that family can't regulate vacation rentals inside their HOA, they end up going to the township. And as far as the township goes, they have the same power as the Sinkavitch family because it's one vote for any resident. So at the township level, we had All this back and forth. And what it represented to investors was a big risk. And if you understand like the players, it's not really that bad. Tobyhanna Township was one of the last to pass their ordinance because of this controversy. The second thing to know is that the ordinance that they initially passed was basically just to pacify a bunch of residents that were like that family in Greenwood Acres. so in the back room, they were like, look, we're gonna pass this ordinance, no one's gonna follow it. We don't expect anyone to follow it. There's not gonna be any enforcement here. So at the time, they said that the limit was two per bedroom up to a maximum of 10. And that, you know, would have ticked off a whole bunch of people. And this family that I'm talking about from Greenwood Acres, they would have been like, yay, we finally we got her. And then they didn't enforce anything. And then other township property owners, people in Tobyhanna Township that were STR owners, they formed together and they sued the township. And it's a very expensive legal battle for the township. So the township was like, All right, we'll give up some concessions. We'll allow you two per bedroom plus two. And then without a max of 14 or without a max of 10. And then they came back and they said, all right, well, now we're gonna do this. And now they've become a little more relaxed. in the last, I want to say nine months, Tobyhanna Township has determined that it's legal five bedroom by building permits. So if you convert your garage into two more bedrooms, then you have to get building permits for those bedrooms to be legally considered bedrooms. that wasn't a requirement before. Before it was just your septic system had to be five bedrooms. And if you were on the public sewer, then that you just had to get like a letter from the community saying that, you know, from the public sewer service saying that you could do this. So they didn't really care before, it's like a pendulum, right? It swings in one direction, it swings in the other. And this whole battle is still going on between these two families over Greenwood Acres. So just something to know that like put local politics. Doesn't really have any winners. It just has a lot of losers. Let's find another township. All right, I'm gonna go to Coolbaugh That's our fifth one. All right, so a lot of people associate Coolbaugh Township with Tobyhanna and Tobyhanna Township with Tobyhanna but Tobyhanna can't claim all of them or both of them. So something to know is that none of Tobyhanna Township is in Tobyhanna the town of Tobyhanna and all of Tobyhanna is in Coolbaugh Township, but not all of Coolbaugh Township is in Tobyhanna I know it's weird, but look at the map, you'll see what I'm talking about. So most of Arrowhead Lakes is in Coolbaugh Township. A small portion of Timber Trails is as well. And then you've also got most of Pocono Summit is in Coolbaugh Township, and then all of Tobyhanna So let's go back to Arrowhead Lakes because we were talking about Pocono Lake very recently. So over here, these four listings are in Riverside Estates. And Riverside Estates is on the Lehigh River. It's actually really nice to have a property that's on the river. I would consider it Lakefront, but the property values are not going as high as Lakefront property is. it's still fishable, it's still, you know, kayakable. but it's not like flat and easy. So I don't know. Like I I think it's pretty cool, but whatever. Riverside Estates they had a little bit of controversy before. They're a small HOA. They were trying to ban it. They went backwards. It's allowed there right now. I would recommend looking a little bit more into that if you end up buying something over there or going under contract. over here with Arrowhead, Arrowhead Lakes, I've got a whole podcast episode on just Arrowhead. And Arrowhead is in Coolbaugh Township. their permits are two per bedroom plus two. Up to a maximum of 14. I mentioned that a little bit earlier as well. So here you can have big houses, but you generally can't go beyond 14 people anyway. So it's not like if you can sleep 16 or you can sleep 18, it makes a difference because of the township. Now, if you get active in the township and you change that ordinance, that's very possible. And it would be really worthwhile doing as well. But Arrowhead Lakes, their HOA fees, while their registration fees tend to be really high. also, it's a gated community. So again, you've got a township and an HOA that are exercising a lot of control over you. A perfect example of that was a couple of years ago, Coolbaugh Township were holding people's short terminal renewals hostage with you have to get a permit for the gravel in your yard because they have a requirement that less than twenty five percent of the lot be impermeable. You had to have grass or dirt, you couldn't have driveway stone throughout your whole yard. Well, there's a whole bunch of houses in Arrowhead that had driveway stone for their yard. And a bunch of those people were required to take all that gravel out of there and bring dirt in in order to have a yard. And they could not renew their short-term rental permit until it had been done. So they had like a 30-day window grace period. And Arrowhead, the gate, would not allow their renters through, knowing that they didn't have an active short-term rental permit. So the two of them. Exercise that control. And if there was no gate, you would have been able to continue renting. You know, just you'd be in violation of a township standard, but you wouldn't have to ruin your guests' vacations just because you were two or three days late getting this whole impermeability resolution taken care of. So just something else, you know. generally speaking, Don, I'd like you to buy something that's not in an HOA or in a gated HOA. But in the Poconos, it's kind of a necessary evil. So there is a small sliver of Locust Lake Village that is in Coolbaugh Township. And that is opposed to most of it, which is in Tobyhanna Township. So I don't have a big preference between the two, between those two townships, but it is something to note that Tobyhanna Township doesn't have a limit of 14. So if you have a bigger house in Locust Lake Village, it would be better if it's in, you know, the section that's in Tobyhanna Township versus the other section. some of you may have heard of the cap on permits, and that was a Tobyhanna Township thing. And that has to do with that local controversy that I was talking about between those two families, but It extended to other people too. Like there's other people with that sentiment. So the cap was they wouldn't allow more than 12% of the residential properties to be active short-term rental permits. The thing is the cap was pointless because they never actually reached it. The whole idea was that there was going to be some sort of revolving door for applications and renewals and stuff like that. That once you have it, you can renew, but for, you know, there has to be open slots or whatever. And it was this big controversy that never actually mattered. Because they never actually met that 12% cap. So it's kind of pointless. Right now they're at like 10%. So just FYI. But back to Coolbaugh Township. So most of Coolbaugh Township is what people consider Pocono Country Place, Tobyhanna Pocono Farms, Pocono Farms East, and Stillwater Lakes Civic Association. So there's a lot of commonality between Stillwater Lakes Civic Association, and Pocono Country Place. I'm gonna go up here to Pocono Country Place and you see how the number of dots has really increased in density. There is a ton of inventory available for sale in Pocono Country Place. I have an entire episode just on Pocono Country Place. I think you can make really good money in there. You can do really well. Once we go down south a little bit, we get into a really nice HOA that unfortunately has like lower values because it's associated with Tobyhanna It's like the town of Tobyhanna brings down the values, but it's really just, you know, the gate issue over in Pocono Country Place. Anyhow, west of this 196, but east of 611 is Pocono Farms Country Club. Now, this actually is a country club. They've got, you know, an 18-hole golf course, they've got an Olympic-sized swimming pool, they've got some really standout amenities. Their HOA fees are relatively high. They do not have a gate. You can take last-minute reservations. Their registration fees are relatively high, but At $125, it doesn't matter how many people you have, they all get access to the amenities the entire time. So your guests don't have to pay for specific passes or anything like that. You can accept reservations where the people are only 18 years old. You can accept reservations where it's like a last-minute booking, and you can accept one-night stays. So that makes Pocono Farms Country Club specifically unique because you've got Ability to open up these filters where other places put like a two-night minimum or a 25 years or older minimum on you. And here you can have those filters a little bit more wide open. Over here on the east side of 196. This section, this big block here, is pretty much all Pocono Farms East. Pocono Farms East has like no HOA fees, they've got no amenities. It's basically the same as being in a subdivision outside of an HOA. Their fees are very small. I think the community roads are owned by the township and maintained by the township, but I'm not sure on that. I think that they split away from Pocono Farms Country Club back in like the COVID era. because their fees used to be like way higher than they are today. And really, when you look at them by themselves, they've got like one little clubhouse and that's it. There's like nothing really bringing people there. And then there's also a couple of properties down here, like one on Jester Court. which looks like it's pending now, but that are like not technically inside of an HOA. I can't verify that. I'm kind of questioning it myself. But then there's a couple places in Coolbaugh Township where short terminals are just not allowed. And that would be like these really small little HOAs or a road that goes off in this direction with a couple trailers on it. that's kind of what we're talking about there. So that is those five townships. And if I just remove that filter You're gonna see that there's a ton of properties in Mount Pocono, but you can't do vacation rentals there. There's a ton in Pocono Manor, Swiftwater, Tannersville. You can't really do vacation rentals there either. Certain zonings you can, a lot of zonings you cannot. there's Penn Estates If we just focus down on Penn Estates like there's some good opportunities in Penn Estates. I just generally don't think it's worth it. I think it's higher risk because. Pretty much you're only allowed to do it in Stroud Township. And Stroud Township, they only allow it if you're in Blue Mountain Lake or Penn Estates. So there's not that strength in numbers that you would normally find in other places. And the HOA itself, I think, is a little bit saturated. there's a ton of three-bedroom inventory there. Another area to look in that's kind of auxiliary, is Big Bass Lake. And Big Bass, if you're in Clifton Township, you can do really well, I think. But it's really kind of kind of further out. It's gonna do really well in the summertime and it's further from things in the winter. now one pro of Big Bass Lake is they do have an indoor pool. It's open seasonally, it's open certain days of the week, just like Emerald Lakes is. And in this whole region and these five townships and their surrounding areas, there's only three places that actually have indoor pools. And that's Emerald Lakes, Big Bass Lake, and the village at Camelback. If we focus down here on this Camelback region. It's worth mentioning the section that's in Jackson Township is pretty much everything you see here. There are some that are like in Pocono Township, don't buy there. but in Jackson Township, this is not residential zoning. This is actually recreation zoning, which means that you can do it. But their fees are relatively high. And there's a lot of three-bedroom inventory over here. So if you want to buy a house. I recommend going four bedrooms because you can still find something like that over here. So watch this. I'm gonna limit the search to four bedrooms or more and watch all the inventory go away. So I'm gonna limit us down to just this section over here by Camelback. And we have forty listings available. When I go to four bedrooms or more, we're down to twelve listings. So 25% are four bedrooms. Let's change that to five and see what happens. There's two. From forty two down to two. Let's change that to six and see what happens. Nothing. Nothing at all. Now that's what I'm talking about. So at three bedrooms, there's 75% of the inventory next to Camelback is three bedrooms. Only 25% is four bedrooms or more. And that's why right up this little road, and it's a little difficult to see on here, but you go back Camelback Road, and then you go up Sullivan Trail Road, right here into Long pond. And this is Emerald Lakes. And if we search in Emerald Lakes, we'll find something different. So I've just outlined Emerald Lakes and you can see there's 32 houses available. If we go to six bedrooms or more, there's three. If we go to five or more, Then now we have six available. If we go to four or more, it's twenty. So getting rid of that filter, 32. So two-thirds are four bedrooms are bigger. And that's just the properties that are available for sale. We could do this this trend, this inventory, right? But like Emerald Lakes is like on average like three-quarters of an acre. So there's more space. People tend to be tended to build more. bigger houses in this neighborhood when they were building houses. The one big problem, and this is glaringly obvious, is that it's right next to two interstates. This is Interstate 380 and Interstate 80. Now you might wonder like, well, what do you do with guests if it's not quiet? Like if they complain about the noise. Generally they don't complain. You know? I'm sure that you caught from this, like, there's no best HOA, there's no best township. It's basically like look for a property that's gonna do really well. And understanding these like dynamics between townships and HOAs and this dartboard analogy, look for a big house in Long Pond. Look for any house in Lake Harmony, look for something that's gonna make your property specifically marketable. High value, low risk level, and that's where to look. It's not necessarily by town or by township or by HOA. every single HOA has its own pros and cons. I find a lot of really good, well-priced inventory in Arrowhead Lakes, but there's a downside too, is that Arrowhead Lakes is like your silent partner. They're taking a lot of your revenue and not really giving you much in return. So like there's pros and cons to every single one of them. So I did promise you some red flags. So there's some red flags to look out for. And generally speaking, I'll go over these four, and you know, you might find this as well. When you're looking for like risk factors for short-term rentals, look at how many primary homes are in that homeowners association or in that township. If you have a lot of people living in the community and working in the community or commuting from there, Those are people who are gonna end up standing up at a township meeting and say, I don't want this in my backyard. I don't have any problem, I don't have anything against Airbnbs, but I don't want it in my backyard, where you've got a lot of primary homes, and that normally takes the form of like primary homes that are owned, right? Not primary homes that are long-term rented. But nevertheless, at the township level, it's people who are residents who get a voice. It's people who are residents that get to vote. If you have a second home here, if it's an Airbnb, You don't get to vote. I'm sorry, you're disenfranchised because you're not a resident there. Okay. So you unfortunately do get demonized sometimes. So the areas where you have a high level of risk are the areas where you have a lot of primary homes. The other area that I've found, generally speaking, is where you have larger governments. That's where you've got more people working in the municipality, more registration, more things going on. Places like Stroudsburg, like the borough of Stroudsburg, the borough of East Stroudsburg Mount Pocono Borough none of those three are good for vacation rentals. Mount Pocono won't allow it unless you're in commercial zoning. And even then there's a ton of red tape. So like when you find like these boroughs and bigger governments, you tend to have a lot more overreach. And then when it comes to short term rentals, it's the same thing. It's also true. that's also one of the reasons why Jackson Township only allows it in recreation zoning and why their fees are high is because most of Jackson Township is primary homes and farms. And there's nobody really sticking up for the vacation rental owner in that neighborhood or in that community, I mean. so the next one is rarity. And so I think it's a red flag if you are the only short-term rental in your HOA or on your street or in your neighborhood or in your township. If it's a rare use, then I think you're at a high risk. If the property is a rare kind of property, though, like an eight-bedroom on the river, that is a good thing. That's a green flag, you know? And it might be worth going into a township that's a little STR unfriendly, Even though there's a high risk, it might still be worth it, you know, because the property's a rare property. It's just there's strength in numbers, right? And the last one I would say is in a homeowners association that doesn't allow it or has tried to ban vacation rentals in the past. And the best example of this I can give you is The Hideout So people ask me all the time about The Hideout And number one, it's not in my dartboards anywhere. It's like what, a fifth or sixth circle out. When you're in The Hideout and people say, Where do you go in the wintertime? Like, what do you go to do? They're like, Well, we're near Kalahari, we're near Camelback. They're not. They're not near either one of them. It's 45 minutes to an hour to get to either one of those things. And as you just saw on my map, there's a ton of inventory that's less than 30 minutes to both of those places. So being like 45 minutes to 60 minutes away, it's not a selling point. And guests are not booking houses in The Hideout So they can drive an hour to go ski and then drive an hour back. So The Hideout they do have like a ski hill. They do have some like wintertime amenities that are useful. But like, you know, I think there's limited value to that, especially if they've got older kids that want more of a challenging hill than just a little bunny hill. But in the Lake Aerial area, there are some really good values. And if you just want a property for the summertime, you don't need to rent it all year long, that's a good area to look. But you're gonna see a lot of homes that feel like vacation homes. It's just like, you know, without that wintertime appeal that the western Poconos has. I don't see you bringing in good numbers. but to focus in on what I'm talking about with the red flag, The Hideout tried to ban short term rentals. And it actually went to court and then it was appealed and it was reversed at a appeals court, and then it was appealed and it was reversed again at the superior court at Pennsylvania. And the only reason why they're allowed to do vacation rentals in The Hideout to date is because their appeals were successful. And because in the bylaws it says to rent. That's it. It's that two words. It's because it says to rent. So an acceptable use of their property is to rent it. But that doesn't mean it's to rent it long term or to rent it short term. And that's what they were arguing about. Anyway, I think it's a high risk area. It's also low value. I don't think that you're going to bring in good numbers in The Hideout Except in the summertime, maybe the fall, maybe the spring, but it's kind of like more remote and it's further away from like wintertime amenities, in my experience. So that's what I would say are red flags to look out for is HOAs that discourage it, don't allow it, or limit it, like Hickory Run Estates. Like that neighborhood limits it to like, you know, 10 permits for the entire community. and currently there's a couple available, but You know, I don't really know if it's worth going into that neighborhood. there's also no amenities. They charge HOA fees and there's like nothing for your guests to use or you. so watch out for stuff like that. And Don, you know, hopefully this has been really helpful to help you identify exactly what you need to look for when it comes to your search for a good vacation rental home. I want you to make good money out here. I also want you to buy a property and fix it up that would be really attractive to guests. So to all my listeners, I genuinely enjoy sharing messages like this. And it's why this is the show where we discuss the challenges as well as the stuff that no one talks about when they sell the dream of easy passive income. If you're a property manager, an owner, operator, a co-host, or just an investor, email me at info@galvanizedmanagement.com. I'd love to connect and learn more about your approach. And if you have a question, Ask it. Your question might be the next one that we break down. And chances are you'll help a lot of other hosts in the process too. We win or we lose together. If this episode helped you, great. I'd appreciate a good rating and a share too, so that we can keep growing organically. Together is how I believe we make this industry better. Until next time, stay steady, keep growing, and keep building something real. This is short-term rental problems and solutions.